The Trio: Swing, ERCP and SAF

Hi. Have you looked at Eclipse "Rich Client Platform" and the new "Swing Application Framework"? Do you have stories to share about them? If I have been asked to choose between Swing, ERCP and SAF, what is your advice for me? Appreciate your kind help.

You forgot the NetBeans Plarform, which is equivalent to Eclipse RCP but for Swing.

The Swing Application Framework only helps you on the UI side. It is meant for small or medium sized applications, or for applications in which you don't want to deal with huge beast like NetBeans/Eclipse RCP. It is a nice framework you can learn in a couple of hours and that will help you write Swing apps more quickly.

I have no experience with either NetBeans RCP or Eclipse RCP so I cannot comment on that. Then again, I never worked on a Swing app large enough to justify the use of either one of them.

If you are in Europe you can try to come to JavaPolis in December. We invited the author of blueMarine, a photo management application based on NetBeans RCP. And there will be talks about Eclipse RCP too.

I have been developping Eclipse RCP applications for one year now and what I can say is that I wish I never stopped Swing developement. I have developped Swing applications for 3 years and I really prefer Swing.

To my mind Swing is easier to learn than SWT/Eclipse RCP. Moreover: using SWT/Eclipse RCP there some GUI behavior you have on a given Os that you have not on a other OS. I have also faced some strange behavior on the project I am working on. Sometime the GUI did not work as expected and nobody could tell me why.

For a long time, SWING has been told to be to slow compared to SWT. Today, it's absolutely false. Eclipse RCP is just more and more trendy; a big hype ! It's my view point.

If you already know Swing, I suggest you learn Netbeans RCP. I am doing SWT/Eclipse RCP only and only because it gives me food at the moment. Maybe you're in the same situation... I am looking forward to come back to Swing; When I have time, I will learn about Netbean RCP.